Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

Caistor, which stands on a tongue or spur half a mile west of “High Street,” is a very interesting spot. Its position is one of great strength, and suggests a British origin, as it has all the characteristics of a “promontory fortress.” It was surrounded by a wall, strengthened at intervals by turrets or bastions, one of which remains in ruins on the south side of the churchyard; there is also a considerable fragment of the western wall in the garden of Grove Cottage. The exact area of the station is difficult to estimate, as the north and east walls have disappeared; but it was perhaps ten or twelve acres. There are two fine springs issuing from the rock on the south side of the fortress. In the churchyard, which is entirely within the area, Roman coins and pottery are constantly found, but stone foundations seem absent, and the fine ornamental ware is scarce. In early records the site is often termed Than—or Thwang—Castre, probably from the tongue of land on which it stands, and from this name Geoffrey of Monmouth ascribes its building[29] to Hengist, according to the legend by which that mythical chieftain encompassed an area granted him with “thongs” of ox-hide. The same story is told of other “Tong Castles” in Shropshire and Kent, and seems borrowed from Virgil’s account of the foundation of Carthage.

The occupation of our county by the Romans appears to have been more thorough than is sometimes supposed. Only in the north-west corner—the Isle of Axholme—which was then marshy and exposed to the Trent floods, are traces of their presence wanting. Much more doubtless remains to be discovered, for Eastern Lindsey is still comparatively unexplored. The district seems to have been, as now, largely agricultural; and the finding of over twenty villa sites in Kesteven and Lindsey indicates that the wealthier class of landowners resided on their estates. This circumstance points to a long period of peace, which may have lasted more than a century—from about A.D. 170. During that time the road system would be completed, and the industries of potters and saltworkers, so characteristic of our county, gradually developed. But a time came when the Pictish and Saxon marauders must have made great havoc in a district which had a long sea-front, and was but slightly protected by walled towns. In the year 368 these two sources of trouble united to overwhelm the province like an invading flood. The northern tribes broke across the Wall of Hadrian, and in concert with the sea-rovers, who had defeated and slain the Count of the Saxon Shore, advanced their plundering hosts to the very gates of London. By a series of victories, Theodosius, the ablest of the imperial generals, gave the province a short breathing-space. But the weight of taxation imposed by an over-centralised government was gradually crushing the provincials; and discontent gave an opening for the revolt of various usurpers in the last days of the Roman rule. When the legions were finally withdrawn in A.D. 410, the country districts became unsafe. Traces of fire in the ruined villas of Scampton, Worlaby, and other places betray the work of a ruthless, uncivilised foe. The owners may have escaped to the towns, or even, if wealthy, have reached the Continent. But their industry was doomed, and many miles of cultivated land must have passed back into mere prairie. The banks and drains were neglected, and much of the fenland, so laboriously won, returned to its former flooded state. If we could recover the story of one large town, such as Lincoln, in the fifth and sixth centuries, many a dark problem would be solved. In the absence of such records, the withdrawal of the Roman legions and officials is like the ringing down of a thick curtain upon the drama of British history in the ancient world.

SAXON CHURCHES IN LINCOLNSHIRE

By A. Hamilton Thompson, M.A.

Lincolnshire is more rich than any other English county in churches which, if few are indisputably of a date earlier than the Norman conquest, retain traces of an architecture whose character at any rate is of a distinctly pre-Norman type. The county has nothing to show, it is true, of that early work, associated with the first century of Saxon and Anglian Christianity, which gives so unique an interest to the church architecture of certain districts in Kent and Northumbria. The neighbouring shire of Northampton possesses in Brixworth a monument whose importance overshadows that of Stow, and in Barnack and Earl’s Barton buildings which are, in point of detail, a match for Barton-on-Humber; while many who might hesitate to grant the pre-Conquest origin of Bracebridge, could hardly deny it to the Northamptonshire church of Wittering. The missionary visit of St. Paulinus has left but one trace, in the dedication to St. “Paul” of a church in Lincoln, of the connection of Lindsey with the religious life of Northumbria. That distinction on which Lincolnshire has prided itself, the possession of a Saxon cathedral at Stow, not hidden away in the foundations of a later building, but still in use as a parish church, begins to lose its value as the historical evidence on which it depends is more carefully examined. With the exception of Stow and St. Peter’s at Barton, the Saxon monuments of Lincolnshire are humble and unpretentious in character, without any very definitely architectural features; and he would be a bold man who should assert positively, on the little evidence which we have to show for their date, that they were built in days of Saxon rule. Equally bold was the assertion of Professor Freeman with regard to the two towers in the southern suburb of Lincoln, that native workmen built them while the Minster was rising in the style of the conquerors on the hill above.[30] Such positiveness is rebuked by the discovery that this picturesque statement was founded on evidence referring to churches in a different part of the city.[31] Avoiding either extreme, we may say, in our present state of knowledge, that most of the so-called Saxon churches of Lincolnshire represent a late state of Saxon art, open to Norman influence, but preserving a distinctly national tradition. Some of these monuments are undoubtedly later than the Conquest: of others, and perhaps of the majority, it may be said that, though a post-Conquest date is possible, yet the character of the work is of a kind that might be expected rather before the Conquest than after, and belongs at any rate to a type of art prior to the general spread of Norman influence. Thus the epithet “Saxon” may fairly be given to such buildings, even though, in point of date, they may belong to the Norman period.

St. Peter’s Church, Barton-on-Humber.

Of the pre-Norman date of the lowest stages of the tower and of the western forebuilding of St. Peter’s at Barton-on-Humber there can be no doubt, as we shall presently see. And at Barton the chief point of interest comes into view, in which these churches are of most importance to the architectural student. At the end of the tenth century, a date which may perhaps be claimed without extravagance for the Barton church, the parish church plan in England was a matter of experiment. The basilican plan with aisles had never been popular beyond a few larger churches: Lincolnshire does not furnish us with a single instance of the nave with aisles or of the apsidal sanctuary, which, with certain modifications, are features of some Saxon plans. The simple plan of aisleless nave and rectangular chancel, which had been adopted probably in most Saxon churches, had been complicated by the introduction of the tower into the scheme. The tower was for the present the uncertain factor whose place in the plan the Lincolnshire builders, and those of other counties with them, were trying to determine; and it is the position of the tower which gives Lincolnshire Saxon ground-plans their peculiar importance. We may be doubtful about the place of towers like Earl’s Barton and Barnack in the plan: they may have been merely western appendages to churches which have now been entirely replaced by later buildings, or they may have been the church itself, with its walls raised into a lofty tower, at once a place for bells and a look-out in time of danger. There can be no such doubt at Barton-on-Humber. In our own day the tower and its western annexe stand at the west end of a large late Gothic church; but, at a restoration in 1898, the foundations of an eastern annexe, very similar in size and shape to the western, were discovered, showing beyond all doubt that the tower formed the main body of the church, standing between a chancel and what may have been a baptistery—rooms for the altar and the font—of almost equal size. The tower was broader than its adjunct: two entrances remain, one on the north, the other on the south, opposite each other, and towards the western end of either wall. Mr. Hodgson Fowler, who discovered the foundations of the chancel, also discovered other foundations, presumably of Saxon date, to the east of the tower, which seem to suggest that a larger building with an elongated plan was in contemplation, but was superseded by a compact plan which found itself centralised in the space allotted to the tower.[32]

A somewhat similar plan occurs at Broughton, a village some four miles west of Brigg, and close to the line of Roman road which led from Lincoln to the Humber. Here the fabric has none of those distinctively Saxon features which are found at Barton; it is almost certainly a work of later date. The eastern wall of the tower, as at Barton, has been absorbed in the breadth of an aisled nave of a later period; but the eastern quoins are still visible, continuing to the ground, and indicating that the tower was once broader than the portion of the building east of it. That this eastern building, moreover, was small, and that the bulk of the congregation occupied the space west of it, is suggested by the fact that, as in many later chancel arches, decorative treatment—too rude here to be taken very seriously as architectural membering, in spite of its efforts—is confined to the western face of the arch by which the chancel was approached from the tower-space. Here, then, we have once more the tower-space forming the main area for worship, with a small chancel to the east. At Broughton, however, instead of the corresponding western annexe which we find at Barton, there is a large three-quarter-circular projection, containing a newel staircase which leads to the belfry stage of the tower; and, instead of the two doorways at Barton, there is only one, this time in the south wall. The western projection at Broughton is often ridiculously called a western apse. It is, and always was, a turret for a staircase. Three other such turrets exist. One, at Brixworth in Northamptonshire, was added in front of an earlier western doorway, when the original porch of the basilican church was heightened into a tower. Another, at Brigstock in the same county, forms an integral part of a western tower with strongly Saxon features; its staircase was always of wood, as may have been originally the case at Broughton.[33] The third instance is in Lincolnshire, at Hough-on-the-Hill, seven or eight miles north of Grantham. Here the stair turret is part of a western tower of more than probably pre-Conquest date, and of proportions as ample as those of Earl’s Barton; and one is tempted to discover a parallel to Broughton, and another quasi-parallel to Barton-on-Humber. But the face which the tower presents to the church behind it is singularly blank; and it remains to be seen whether there lie hid, beneath the plaster, quoins, like those at Broughton, to indicate the existence of a chancel whose foundations may still be buried beneath the western floor of the nave.